NCAA Basketball: 5 biggest takeaways from 2020-21 initial NET rankings

The first set of NET rankings for the 2020-21 NCAA Basketball season have been released. What were the most notable takeaways?

Monday was a big day for the sport of NCAA Basketball. In the morning, an agreement was made with the city of Indianapolis to host the entire men’s 2021 NCAA Tournament tournament, with several historic local arenas being used to host the games.

Now that we know where the games are going to be held, we just need to know who the 68 participants will be. We’re just under 10 weeks until Selection Sunday on March 14 and almost everyone has exited non-conference play and is ready for league matchups. And now that we’re into conference action, the talks about seeding and who is on the bubble will start to heat up.

One of the tools we use to analyze teams is the NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool) rankings, a relatively new thing used to determine the potential selections and seeding of teams for the tournament. It’s essentially the replacement for the previously maligned RPI, although there are some that aren’t overly fond of the NET themselves.

https://twitter.com/marchmadness/status/1346151024273334275

As expected, the No. 1 overall team in the country Gonzaga is also at the top in the first set of rankings, followed by Baylor, Tennessee, Illinois, and Villanova. With not too much data (most teams have played around 8-9 games total), it’s not too surprising that there are some “outliers” in the top-30, including Colgate at No. 16, despite playing just two games so far.

While there’s no need to have too many overreactions, there’s no reason why not to take a closer look at the first rankings and what it means for all of the teams involved.